


In the Dark of the Night

by animeangelriku



Series: Puzzleshipping Advent [4]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: (I think what happens here could be considered a symptom of ptsd so I'd rather be safe than sorry), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Hatred, fear of the dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 08:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12931116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animeangelriku/pseuds/animeangelriku
Summary: Sometimes, Atem’s fears and insecurities get the best of him, no matter how much he tries not to dwell on them. Luckily for him, Yugi will always be there to put his mind at ease.





	In the Dark of the Night

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains depictions of an anxiety attack brought on by memories regarding fear of the dark and slight claustrophobia. If any of these is a trigger for you, PLEASE be careful while reading this. 
> 
> (You can also read this on my [Tumblr](http://animeangelriku.tumblr.com/post/168250251837/puzzleshipping-in-the-dark-of-the-night), if it's more to your comfort.)

The light is slowly fading away. The darkness surrounds him, closing in on him, suffocating him. He wants to fight it, he tries to catch a glimpse of the dwindling light far ahead but it’s gone before he can latch on to it, a flickering candle snuffed out in a storm, and the darkness is stronger than him, it has always been. It wraps its cold hands around him and he tries to run, to escape from it, but he can’t, he _can’t_ , and he falls to his knees and shivers at the cold crawling under his skin and the darkness steals the very breath from his lungs and it laughs at him, it _laughs_ at him and whispers in his ear, _You silly little boy, thinking you have a right to be in this world when you shouldn’t even be breathing, you shouldn’t even be **alive** —_

Atem jerks awake with a choked-off gasp, the sheet he covered himself with before going to sleep now twisted around his legs. He’s still gasping, he feels like he can’t take enough air, like the darkness is still trying to squeeze the life out of him, and he desperately turns his head and looks around, hoping that he’s not in the nightmare anymore, hoping with all his might to see—

Light. 

Moonlight.

It streams into Yugi’s room through the skylight, bathing Atem’s surroundings in different hues of blue. He can see the room he’s in and perfectly recognize every single thing within his line of vision, every single thing within the four walls around him—the things that make this place _real_. He can see the clock on the bed’s headboard, the desk (along with his phone and a small box on top of it) and its chair next to the bed, the books and movies and board games resting on the shelves beside the desk, the closet in front of him, the mirror next to it…

Atem kicks the sheet off him and shakily gets to his feet, only to climb on the chair of Yugi’s desk and sit with his knees pulled in towards himself. He reaches for the box on the desk and opens it with trembling fingers, gently taking out a small plastic battery-powered night light in the shape of a Kuriboh. He presses the _On_ button and watches as the plastic Kuriboh casts a soft, yellowish glow around his fingers.

Without entirely realizing he’s doing it, Atem brings a hand up to his chest, expecting to find a chain around his neck and the weight of a broken golden pendant that was once comforting to him. There is no chain, though, and there is no Millennium Puzzle, either—no Millennium Puzzle to keep his soul trapped inside its infinite maze any longer. 

For a few precious seconds, Atem feels his heartbeat steady, and he thinks to himself, _It’s okay, you’re okay, you’re safe, I’m **safe.**_

But his mind has played tricks on him before, making him see what he wants to see only to take it all away when he least expects it. He doesn’t want to blink and suddenly find himself back in the never-ending darkness, feel it like a noose around his throat, feel its claws wrapping around his legs and arms and tugging him back towards the shadows—

Atem places the night light back on the desk and reaches almost blindly for his phone, which rests next to the box of the Kuriboh night light. As soon as his fingers close around it, he searches for Yugi’s name in his list of recent calls, finding it at the very top; they talked earlier today and then again before bed. Even though he knows Yugi will answer despite how late it is, his thumb hovers above his name.

Yugi’s been away for the past week and a half promoting his very first game, soon-to-be-released thanks to the game’s joint development with KaibaCorp. While their time spent apart hasn’t been easy on either of them, Atem knows that this is Yugi’s dream, that Yugi is proud of what he’s accomplished and happy that he gets to share his work with the world, and Atem feels that same pride and happiness for Yugi multiplied tenfold. 

He also knows that the press conferences Yugi has to give leave him absolutely exhausted at the end of the day, goodness, Atem could hear it in his voice when they talked earlier, and he needs all the rest he can get for tomorrow. Yugi deserves a good night’s sleep. Atem shouldn’t bother him with this, with his silly doubts and his ridiculous thoughts and his stupid, stupid, _stupid_ childish fears, he shouldn’t be so _selfish._

But.

Atem presses Yugi’s name and then holds the phone to his ear.

It rings once. Twice. It rings a third time.

He’s about to hang up—and pretend that the late call was an accident, if Yugi were to ever question him about it—when Yugi answers shortly after the fourth ring, and Atem tries to ignore the way his breath catches in his throat, he’s so _relieved._

“Hey,” Yugi greets him, his voice thick with sleepiness yet bright and beautiful as always. “What’s up?” he asks, and Atem is determined not to make a big deal out of this, to simply say that he had a bad dream and he knew talking to Yugi would make him feel better. And, really, that’s just a sugar-coated version of what actually happened, so he wouldn’t technically be lying.

Except…

He’s quiet for such a long time that Yugi speaks again. “Atem?” He does it so softly, so worriedly, so _lovingly_ that Atem’s resolve breaks right then and there.

“ _Aibou,_ ” he practically sobs, exhaling the old nickname in a shaky breath, like it’s the last word he’ll ever say. He closes his eyes and bites his lip, trying to hold back the tears that threaten to choke him. He fails miserably, and a few tears spill over his eyes and down his cheeks.

He already regrets this. 

For a moment, Yugi’s silent on the other end of the line, and the only sound in the room is Atem’s heavy breathing as he struggles to keep himself together. 

“Sit up straight and take a deep breath,” Yugi says, gently, “and hold it in.” It’s only now that Yugi mentions it that Atem realizes he’s curled into himself on the chair, as if the ceiling were about to fall on top of him. He forces himself to sit up against the chair’s backrest and inhale through his nose. Then he holds the air in.

“One,” Yugi begins counting. “Two. Three. Four.”

Atem exhales through his mouth. He takes another deep breath, holds the air in, and when he lets this one out, he notices just how tense his entire body is, how tight his muscles are. He relaxes his shoulders, pushes his legs to the ground and scoots to the edge of the chair so that he can press the soles of his feet to the floor beneath him. The next breath he takes comes a little easier than the last, like his lungs have more space to expand inside his chest.

The tears have stopped, but he still feels them lingering behind his eyes, feels the sobs burning deep in his throat. He wipes at his nose, sniffling. 

“Can you tell me some of the things you see?” Yugi asks. Atem wipes his eyes with his sleeve and glances around the room. 

“I see the books on your desk,” he starts, clearing his throat. “The clock above the bed. Your GameBoy on the shelves. Mine next to it. The board games, your movie collection…” He looks up at the skylight. “The sky.”

“Can you describe it?”

Atem focuses on the sight in front of him. “The moon is smaller than it was last night, but it’s mostly clear. Just a few clouds here and there.” The clouds he sees aren’t enough to cover the stars, and he tries to find the constellations Yugi taught him when they went stargazing a few months ago, including the silly ones they made up. 

“How about some things you can touch?” Yugi prompts next.

“The chair,” Atem responds immediately. He reaches out to touch every object he lists to Yugi. “The desk. The Kuriboh night light you gave me. Its box. My phone. The floor.” He gets up from the chair and climbs back into the bed, sitting cross-legged on top of it. He presses the palm of his hand flat against the sheets beneath him, focusing on how the fabric feels against his skin. “The bed,” he says, “and the sheets.”

Atem takes one last deep breath, exhaling it as slowly as he possibly can, and it’s like he exhales the tension in his body along with it, like he’s pushing it out of him until there’s nothing left of it. It makes him light-headed, and he collapses back onto the bed, stretching his legs out in front of him. 

“Better?” Yugi asks him, and Atem nods, even though he knows Yugi can’t see him. His head is pounding and his throat is still burning and his eyes just _hurt_ , but at least he can breathe again. The light from the plastic Kuriboh seems brighter now, almost bright enough to envelope the entire room in its yellowish glow. 

“Better,” he answers, and he actually _means_ it. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Yugi says, his voice light and soft and soothing wonderful. Atem is about to apologize for waking him up, for bothering him because of a stupid nightmare, but Yugi seems to read his mind somehow, because the next thing he says is, “Just because I’m not there doesn’t mean you have to deal with this on your own.”

Atem knows that. He knows it, he _does,_ it’s just… 

He just _forgets,_ sometimes, that his thoughts and feelings are valid, that his _fears_ are valid—that if something scares him or makes him uneasy or simply bothers him one way or another, it’s not stupid, no matter how much it might seem like it.

He knows this. He just has trouble believing it sometimes.

But he’s getting there, at least.

“Sorry for waking you, though.”

Yugi sighs heavily, but Atem recognizes that the way he does it is in mock annoyance, and it’s not directed at him. “No, don’t worry. I don’t know if things are set up or not in here, but I’ve been hearing people shouting to move things this way or the other and to do this and that for the past two hours…” Then he groans in _actual_ annoyance. “I swear I dreamed that they were still running around the entire place during tomorrow’s press conference.”

Atem laughs, his entire body shaking with it. “I bet Kaiba would have a stroke.”

“I’m almost sure he actually did in the dream,” Yugi says, and the seriousness in his voice just makes Atem laugh harder. “Then again, there was also a giant hot dog stand in the corner of the room, so don’t take my word for it.”

“Oh, wow,” Atem chuckles, his arm resting across his stomach as he stares up at the ceiling. “Wouldn’t _that_ be something.” 

“It’s not a bad idea,” Yugi mumbles pensively, like he’s picturing it in his head. “I might ask for one next time. ‘Sorry, Kaiba, but no hot dog stand, no press conference.’”

Atem laughs again, trying to imagine how that scenario would end up. There are stranger things Kaiba has done, so perhaps it wouldn’t be so impossible to achieve. “Let me know how that goes.”

“You bet I will,” Yugi agrees with a soft laugh of his own. “For now, I better let you get back to sleep.”

As soon as the word _sleep_ comes out of Yugi’s mouth, Atem feels his eyelids drooping closed, and he’s overcome by a yawn so big that it makes his ears pop.

Oh. Wow. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was. 

“I should do the same,” Atem says. “Let you get back to sleep, I mean. You’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

“ _Ugh,_ ” Yugi groans, though it becomes a chuckle in the end. “Don’t remind me. I love this, and I love what it stands for and what it means, and there’s a part of me that still can’t believe this is happening, you know? But I also can’t wait to get back home.”

Atem smiles to himself. “I know,” he says, holding himself back from adding, _I can’t wait for you to get back home, either._

He knows that Yugi knows it. 

“Well, then,” Yugi begins, and Atem can practically hear the smile on his voice. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” 

“Don’t forget to tell Kaiba about the hot dog stand,” he reminds him, grinning at the laugh Yugi lets out. “And good luck on the press conference. You’ll do amazing.”

“Ah, thank you,” says Yugi. “And I won’t forget, don’t worry. Goodnight, Atem.”

“Goodnight, Yugi,” he replies. “I love you.” 

Through the phone, Yugi exhales a hum of contentment. “I love you, too.”

They both hang up at the same time, and Atem sits up only long enough to place his phone back on the desk before he lies back down, staring intently at the ceiling. 

With one of his arms still across his stomach, he brings his other hand up to his chest and rests it atop his heart and… and he lets himself feel his heartbeat. He focuses on the pulse beneath his palm, the pulse beneath his skin, beating against his chest and showing him that he’s alive, alive, so alive.

_Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Ba-thump._

Atem knows this won’t be the last time he has the same nightmare. This won’t be the last time something will make him believe he’s back in the Millennium Puzzle, trapped and locked inside the never-ending darkness for eternity. 

But right now, he reminds himself that he’s here.

He’s not trapped inside the Millennium Puzzle anymore.

He’s free.

He’s _here._

He’s _alive._

And right now, that’s all that matters.

**Author's Note:**

> When I was in college, after I'd lived with a roommate for almost a year, I asked to transfer to an individual dorm. Said dorm had no windows, and it was only when I went to sleep on my first night there that I realized _no_ light filtered in. None at all. After hours of trying (in vain) to sleep, I started having trouble breathing, feeling like something would come out of the dark, feeling like the room was closing in on me, and I called my mom. It was 4 A.M., but she still answered and talked me through my incoming anxiety attack, telling me to breathe and to just talk to her about what I was gonna do in school the next day. 
> 
> The techniques Yugi uses to "ground" or "center" Atem (the breathing exercises and the "things you can see/touch" and the talking at the end to distract him) might not work on everyone during/after an anxiety attack. The breathing exercises work for me, but I prefer to do the talking rather than the listening, like Atem does here. Yugi knows this, and so he's the one doing the talking. I also sometimes hum or sing to myself. 
> 
> Everyone's different, and our coping mechanisms are just as different from each other's. An anxiety attack for one person will most likely be different than an anxiety attack for another person, too. So if you suffer from anxiety attacks and "popular" or "well-known" techniques don't work for you, please don't hesitate to try different things or ask someone else for help until you find something that will always be able to calm you down, no matter what. Please take care of yourselves and reach out to someone if you need to.


End file.
